Saturday, August 9, 2014

He is perhaps the greatest professional golfer in history. With 79 PGA Tour victories, and 14 PGA Major trophies, he is consistently coupled with the legendary and record shattering Sam Snead and Jack Nicklaus. His career earnings are the greatest of any player ever in the PGA, even accounting for inflation, and he holds the lowest career scoring average in PGA tour history. Named the PGA Player of Year a record eleven times, he is none other than Tiger Woods.

And he has ruined the game of golf.

Let me explain. From any reasonable measurement, golf as a sport and industry is in serious trouble. While soaring PGA tour prize money has surged in the past decade, this only masks the underlying difficulties facing golf. According to a new report by CNN Business, sales at Adidas, the owner of the famous TaylorMade golf brand, have plummeted and dropped by about 20% just in the past months. Callaway Golf posted similar results, and even Nike golf is struggling. There are many reports of a saturated golf course market, with declining revenues. Youth pursuing golf as a competitive sport is waning and even among many players who have tried golf, a growing number have walked away from it. Last month, Dick's Sporting Goods laid off more than 400 of its golf staff, citing slowing sales and a lack of interest. Most troubling is declining television viewership, which has driven golf's ascent over the past few decades and is now seemingly powerless to stop its decline.

I am a golf aficionado and greatly enjoy my weekends watching the sport. Yes, I have played it some, more in the past, but consider myself much more of a student than a player. I enjoy its variety, the changing conditions and courses, the drama of the tension and strain that most players face on Sunday afternoon as they realize a few shots can make the difference between a legendary career and an also ran. For many years, I attended PGA tournaments, most notably the ATT at Pebble Beach each February, and the value of conversation on the golf course for business is something I touch upon in my classes for MBA's.

But the reality is that over the past twenty years golf put way too much emphasis on Tiger Woods. As he ascended and ultimately eclipsed the careers of many other great contemporary players who likely would have been dominant players in other generations, the attention and focus upon Tiger became an obsession for the golf industry. If he played, the hype and buildup as the tournament unfolded escalated, even if he was not playing well. Click on any one of a number of prominent websites for golf as a sport, and his image, statistics, stories, rumors, and innuendo were everywhere. With time, one could see all too often what appeared to be players who were content to battle for second place. Few other than Sergio Garcia, Phil Mickelson and a handful of others could rise to the occasion to compete against the seemingly unstoppable Tiger. As an industry, golf made a fundamental mistake in business, and even now seems unable to pivot away from what has led them to this point.

Here, I want to make an analogy to something I have learned from both research and experience in entrepreneurship. In my MBA courses at PLNU one of the assigned books for their reading is Never Bet the Farm written by Anthony Iaquinto and Stephen Spinelli and as the title indicates, their advice is that one should never go "all in" on a venture or enterprise. This is simply a modern version of our grandparents counsel to "don't put all your eggs in one basket." Golf put all their "eggs" into the basket of Tiger Woods, and as he made his stunning ascent so too did golf. And as his injuries and personal troubles have diminished his consistency and appearances these past five years, so too has golf diminished as well. This is no coincidence.

But there is hope. Golf needs to return to respecting its players but not idolizing them, as it has with Tiger Woods. This is in no way a diminishment of his talent and career, but to date the golf press, media, commentators and websites continue to excessively fixate upon the trials and tribulations of Tiger Woods, and too often neglect the broader trends and personalities in golf. If emphasis was placed upon the magnificent breadth and diversity of both the male and female players from many nations, rather than the superstar status of a few, golf as an industry can make it through this difficult season. In a globalized world and with young people viewing traditional geographical and national borders as suggestive rather than mandatory, enormous opportunity exists to bring some of these exciting young international players to our attention.

There are other things that could be done, including creating golf mentors and green fee subsidies for aspiring golfers of all ages who cannot afford the services of course professionals and instructors. The PGA should be sponsoring golf teams at the high school and collegiate level and not just at the elite schools. Individual players could do more within their own communities to be ambassadors for the sport. Manufacturers and retailers of golf clothing and equipment should consider donating items to a broader population than is currently done.

The window for golf is closing, and closing rapidly. If a new attitude and approach does not emerge in the near future, embracing not what golf was but what it can be, for a broader and more diverse group of people, golf will be relegated to a few great courses and tournaments. And this will be a loss for all of us, whether we play or not. Give us less Tiger, and give it to us soon.

Friday, August 1, 2014

I have now been a citizen of the U.S. for a total of ten Presidents, starting with President Eisenhower (no, not Roosevelt, Theodore or Franklin!) And I voted for the first time while I was actually in my first months of service in the U.S. Navy, a privilege that had been recently granted me by a constitutional amendment. (My candidate lost.)But I am not here to talk about my own particular political views, but rather the language that Presidents and other influential leaders use. And I must admit, President Obama's use of the office and the language he employs to speak to the nation (and to the world), is unusual, to say the least. As a Professor of Entrepreneurship, I am used to the unusual, the disruptive, the activities and innovations that move companies and economy actively, aggressively, assertively. So it is not the style per se that is problematic, but rather the sheer ineffectiveness of it as used by the President.Yesterday in Kansas City, using what has become almost a signature staccato style, President Obama chided Congressional Republicans with "Come on and help out a little bit. Stop being mad all the time. Stop just hating all the time. Come on." When I first heard it I did a double-take--did the President just call other Americans "haters?" I went online and confirmed that is exactly what he did. With a beaming audience behind him nodding and applauding. (Ugh! These staged audiences for politicians of all types makes me ill. I can see it now, a 23 year old aide freshly minted from a good university manipulating people as mere mannequins or props--"OK, now, when he/she turns to his left, and looks back at you, applaud loudly. And when he/she gets quiet, around the middle of the speech, look serious. Got it?" )

Now President Obama certainly has his vociferous and at times unfair critics, and a House of Representatives majority of Republicans who are committed to thwarting every idea or initiative (of which there are scarcely any of in the past year), so some of this can be understood. But I simply cannot imagine any President of any stripe, and of any level of competence, intrigue, or background, calling other Americans who disagree politically with him as "haters." Was it in jest? Used to lighten the moment? Often with our current President, one cannot distinguish in his tone if he is chiding or praising, lifting up or tearing down. It makes those of us away from the extremes and vulgarities of politics confused, dispirited, disillusioned. And it is fairly new to Presidential politics and the prestige of the office, and frankly, it seems very ineffective. It is a poor substitute for governance by inspiration, and six years after he stormed to power what seemed so fresh as a candidate now is stale beyond belief.

Long ago as an undergraduate student, I started with great certainty on a path of a radio-television broadcasting major. After four years of military service, much of it deployed overseas, I was enthusiastic and hungry for higher education, soaking in knowledge and instruction that few of my peers likely had. I had dreamed of in 1979-80 of finally starting college in earnest. And in my first "R-TV" course, taught by the Department Chair, I was crestfallen by a style and engagement with his students that was distant, aloof, cold, and sterile. With several decades of instruction, academic papers and accomplishments, and of course, his Ph.D. certifying his mastery of the topic, he seemed frustrated that we introductory students were somehow below his standards.

During one lecture, he asked for questions and I referred to our textbook and the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, a noted French political thinker and historian. I pronounced Tocqueville's name with an ending of "hard" L's, something Americans often do. The instructor stopped, and in what I perceived to be a sneering and non-instructive way, corrected my mistake. Later that day, I changed majors and never thought again about broadcasting as a profession.

It has been my experience in business and academia that my mistakes more often than not come not from having bad ideas but rather failures in my capacity to communicate in an uplifting, inspiring, and engaging way. This is a lesson of leadership, and fortunately I have had and do have others who tell me when I have acted this way. Often it is unintentional (which is no great excuse), but it is a lesson I must continually learn and re-learn.

Any President, Prime Minister or Monarch., as well as any other senior executive or leader in any industry, has great capacity to use his or her office to compel, persuade, cajole, reveal, propel. And I am just not seeing this in President Obama, and I say this not with glee but with chagrin.

Perhaps my standards of Presidential leadership are too high, for I have had the benefit of leaders as diverse and distinctive as Kennedy and Reagan, long before Obama. But these days I am increasingly drawn back to 1980 again, and in a warm classroom at Fresno State University, I am feeling more and more like I need to change majors.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Well, my my, it has been a long time! My sincere apologies, and I simply cannot believe it has been...gulp!...four years since I have posted here! A lot has transpired and I apologize to anyone (students, alums, colleagues, Pulitzer Prize Committee, etc.) , who has wondered where I went during this absence...Back in 2010 my work changed at PLNU in that we re-organized the Center I led...and it was changed to a Business and Economic Institute and it has been a blur of a great deal of work and energy and creativity during these years. I am grateful for that time and opportunity, and I think we really have accomplished a lot in providing PLNU the leading university based Institute in our fields in San Diego, and one of the most influential ones in the U.S. I also accomplished some academic writing in economics, entrepreneurship, and began to teach a new class on negotiations for MBA's, for which I wrote the curriculum...a lot has gone on! The office also created a fairly active blog to which I contributed to as well, so "Ontrapranur" was neglected...But effective January 1, 2014, I resigned from full-time work at PLNU...and the past months have been good as I have made this transition...still teaching a bit and doing some consulting...and more traveling...but it was a good time to make a change and I am confident that the Institute at PLNU is better than ever!

So this means that I will start writing on topics of interest to me again...and as the title of the blog means it will be items that reflect a voice that is "broadly speaking" for I profess interest in many things but no great expertise in many of them. For example, I have always been fascinated by things as diverse as time travel, physics, medieval languages, etymology, myth, and psychology...but really have much training in any of them...what I do have is an eye for interesting things and a fascination for how and why things work...and I think this comes out in my teaching and relationship to students...

A great result of the change in my routine has been that I am going for long walks...typically 5-8 miles three or four times a week but as long as 15 miles...and a few weeks ago I purchased a beach cruiser bicycle and so have been riding as well...in the Mission Beach and Pacific Beach area...and these times by myself have been incredibly invigorating...seeing details and items that I easily miss by passing through quickly...the hours alone have been wonderful and i am savoring these days and the time to think, pray, listen to the radio, and simply see people on my daily journeys...So be well and stay tuned...more to come!